


Too Much Is Enough For Us To Burn

by surreallis



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-05
Updated: 2008-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:32:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreallis/pseuds/surreallis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she goes back, looking for clues. It's not always a matter of faith. Together and alone and there's always a storm between them in some way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much Is Enough For Us To Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Informed Consent and Fetal Position.
> 
> Written for the With-Meaning comm on LJ, a Cameron ficathon.

It's one of those older churches, built with pale stone and white mortar, a tall, slim bell-tower rising into the sky. It's small, with only three arched wooden doors, stained dark, guarding its entrance. Alison hesitates, hand grasping the wrought-iron door handle, as a low rumble of thunder rolls out from distant clouds. Where she stands there's still sunlight, but the storm front is coming.

If she believed in God she might see this as an omen.

If.

There's a cool wind against her skin, and she feels a little dreamy, her cheeks a little hot, like she has a fever. She might. There's a summer cold going around. But she's been drifting for a while now, further away, and no one seems to want to tether her.

Maybe they're all drifting in some odd ways, away from House, away from each other. She isn't sure whether this is good or bad, but change is always a little dislocating. Maybe that's why she's thinking about Chase so much lately.

Maybe.

The sharp, acrid scent of incense envelops her as she steps into the vestibule of the church. There's organ music and human coughs, and she walks up the steps to the main church hall. Catholic, and the middle of the afternoon, and so the long, narrow body of the church is only filled with a few old ladies and transients sitting in the solid, dark pews. No ushers work the floor.

There's a different sort of silence in churches; in every church she's ever been in, and that's been quite a few over the past few months. It's heavier, more frightening, less forgiving of your wordless sounds. Everything echoes.

_"You can't decide if we're helping or hurting him; if he's good or bad; or if you want paper, plastic or a burlap sack! Do your damn job!"_

Everything.

There's one truth she's learned over the last few years with House. Believing in things hurts. And it's the only way you can really move forward. If you don't choose sides you're just a ghost…

The wooden floor creaks under her feet, and she turns before the main entrance to the nave, following a narrow, dark hallway toward the outer aisle. There's a small pewter bowl bolted to the wall there in the darkness, and she stares down at the holy water, still entranced by the arcanum of it all. Of all the churches she's been to, the Catholics still cling to the most ritual. Surely if there are traces to be found—evidence of any sort—it will be buried in the incense and tongue of the old Roman liturgy.

She touches just her fingertips to the water and feels it cling to her skin. It doesn't make her heart speed up or her vision more clear. But there's something there, in that oiled weight to the water, which makes her pause. Her science tells her God does not exist, but instinct tells her to believe whatever she needs to in order to survive. Is this how people live with the darker shades of their lives?

She slips into the back of the church and sits next to the aisle in the very last pew. The stained glass appears brightly lit on one side of the building, dark on the other. The storm is coming from the west.

_There's a path that leads away from her like a long, sinuous thread, and it is filled with images of the dead: A husband wasting away, a brother walking away, a father coughing, a distant mother whose eyes never seem to really focus in on the girl before her. The girl dipping a toe into the world and then jumping in… _

The priest starts his rituals, and she doesn't join in. She sits and studies the stained glass and the people sitting ahead of her. She's tried all the routines. She's sung and recited and knelt and even prayed, but it only left her feeling small and unaffected. This is the last time she'll come and sit. She thought she'd been searching for something, but she's not. Not really. She's waiting for something.

She's not sure how she got here, to this place in life.

She no longer occupies the same position in space as House. She orbits him now, in a distant arc, and he only casts his shadow upon her when he passes between her and the sun. In the absence of his shade, something else is growing. She can feel it there uncurling—another life. It's still shapeless, its edges still unclear, but it's there and it flickers just beyond her vision. It sucks the marrow from her bones and makes her weary, but she smiles all the same and heals the sick the way she always has.

She smiles when she's supposed to, and still cares (that will never change, she supposes), and still spars with him when she catches him lurking. It's effortless, this numb routine. And although sometimes she feels those sparks that tell her he's watching her again, when she turns to glance from the corner of her eye there's nobody there. She could be going crazy… or listening to too much Pink Floyd. _I cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown…_

His influence has done weird things to her.

She can't keep doing this, she realizes. She's running in place and they're leaving her behind. She's burying herself. She's flying away. She's alive and she's dead. She's drifting along and soon she'll be invisible. He will never change, and because of that, she must.

Her gaze slides along the people reciting the prayer from their black books. Wouldn't it be cool if the people who loved you met you when you died? If you could live for all eternity and never worry about dying—really dying?

With apologies to Fox Mulder: she wants to believe. It just isn't going to happen.

It's disappointing somehow that she can't make it work. She can't quite deny that maybe she's just looking for the easy way out. Some way to be comfortably numb, as Mr. Floyd would say, if he were a man and not a rock band. She has nothing against religion, it's just never done anything for her. _He_ (in the Godly sense and not the House Almighty sense) has never done anything for her.

She's already changing. Is it something she's instigated herself, or is it in spite of her and her self-sabotaging efforts? She still can't decide.

She jumps as her pager vibrates against her waist.

It's the code to report, so she slides quietly from the pew and doesn't look back. The doors to the nave are closed now, and the vestibule is silent, only the faintest echo of the priest's voice making it through the thick wooden doors.

Outside it's now raining. She has her cell phone out to call, but shoves it back in her bag and steps out into the wet. It's cold against her scalp and she walks quickly toward the parking lot and the shelter of her car. The smell of wet, heated pavement floods her sinuses. Her pager vibrates again.

She parked in a far corner of the worn lot, and it hadn't dawned on her then, but now she wonders why. Why does she keep herself so apart like this?

_Damaged._

She slows as she crosses the empty expanse of cement. There are trees thick with green leaves growing along the broken edge of the lot, and beneath one of them, sheltered from the rain, is House's bike, with House leaning against it. Waiting.

When she draws closer he snaps his own cell phone shut and slides it into his pocket. Her pager goes still.

"Took you long enough," he growls.

The rain runs in rivulets down her face, and she glares through it. "There's no emergency, is there." It's not a question.

He shrugs. "Well, not medically speaking anyway. But I'm _dying_ to know what the hell you're doing here."

She pushes her wet hair out of her face, slicking it back over her head. "Right." She walks around her car and climbs behind the wheel. Before she can put her key in the ignition the passenger side door opens and he slides in beside her. She looks at him.

"It's pouring out there," he protests. "I can't ride in this."

She sighs.

He shrugs again. "It's probably almost over anyway. I think I see blue sky over there."

She looks in the direction he motions toward and sees nothing but a black bank of clouds. She weighs her options but in the end she knows it's useless. Once House sinks his teeth in…

She blows a slow, resigned breath out and sags back against the seat. "I'm trying to find the meaning of life. There. Now you know."

His mouth curves a little wickedly. "No, you're not."

"You're right," she confesses, deadpan. "I'm sleeping with the priest."

That stops him for a full second, eyes startled and lips parting, before he almost grins. "The one that's at least eighty and uses a walker, or the young one with the hair that looks like Elvis?" He pauses. "After he started eating too many fried banana sandwiches."

She sighs.

He lifts a finger to his lips, pensively. "My money's on the 80-year-old, but then—" He glances at her—"You do surprise from me time to time."

She sees a sudden image of the supply closet door opening, House's eyes on her as Chase, shirtless, jumps away from her, swearing.

Not as much as she surprises herself.

"Why all the religion over the past few months?" he suddenly asks, serious.

She stumbles a bit, and then tries to change the subject. "Have you been following me?"

"It was Ezra Powell wasn't it?"

She stares at him. "I…"

"Do you want God to exist or not? Would it make you feel better, knowing there's a heaven?"

"Yes," she answers, darkly.

"And?"

She stares at the water running down the windshield, blurring the world outside. She feels damned, but knows he'll laugh. "It doesn't matter," she says softly.

Never knowing when it's enough, he forges ahead. "What I really want to know is, if you don't believe in heaven, don't believe in hell, then why do you try so hard to be good?"

She doesn't answer him. This is an old argument. Tiring.

He seems to fill the car. It's almost invasive, the way he takes up space. Her space. He pins her with a stare. "The way you live this life makes no difference in the end, so why do you insist on being so damn nice?"

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be real!" His brows are furrowed and his gaze intense, and she feels the anger rising in her.

"I am _real_! The fact that you can't trust anyone doesn't make me less _real_!"

"Then why?"

"Because it's all we have!" she finally shouts, finally angry.

Her emotion always cuts him. He stares at her, still and finally silent.

"This one life is all we have," she continues, bitterly, "And if we don't make it bearable for each other, then what's the point? Because I don't want to go through this life causing people pain!"

"So, you'll take all their pain onto your shoulders and let it bury you?" His voice is sharp.

"No," she growls, exasperated. "But I won't add all my shit to theirs so they have to carry more! You should try it sometime!" She glares at him, and he holds her gaze, blue eyes dark in the gray light of the storm.

"You're an—"

"Oh, fuck you…" she mutters, cutting him off before he can call her an idiot. She slouches a bit behind the wheel.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

"Yes. I kiss Chase with it too." She aims to hurt, doubts that's possible.

Silence falls.

The rain is so heavy it sounds like marbles against the car roof. It's unsettling, and she turns the key in the ignition and flips the wipers on.

He's sullen and still and silent, and he doesn't glance at her. Not even once. She's glad. There was a time she'd have savored this chance: House's interest and his anger; House in her front seat, all alone-- but not now. Not a few weeks out from a supply closet and House's indifference. Not with Cuddy's warning still turning inside. Her mind is too tangled, her feet too loose upon the earth. She's anchorless and she's wary.

The wipers click and sway and the world distorts. They sound loud in the silence, but she doesn't want to turn them off and close them off from the world again. She can't quite bring herself to strand them like that. Together and alone and there's always a storm between them in some way. If she can see land she might not drown.

"You never answered my question." His voice is a bit of a shock in the silence. She glances at him, but he's staring through the rain-soaked glass, brows furrowed.

"What question?" She lifts one brow suspiciously. She's pretty sure she answered his question and then some.

"Do you love him?"

She stares at him. Remembers how he called her out in front of everyone.

_"Be patient. She's going through all of us. She'll get that jungle fever eventually." _

"I'm not going through anyone."

"You love him?" The scorn in his voice is palpable.

She glares at him. "That wasn't a question. That was you being an ass."

He shrugs. "Do you?" He still can't look at her.

"You know the answer to that. You don't think I _can_ love him. That was the whole point, wasn't it? To mock him. And me." _Always her._

He's quiet for a long moment, letting the silence fall again. He presses an innocuous thumb into his wounded thigh and stares at the rain hitting the glass. It's starting to mist with their heat. His legs look impossibly long folded up against her dashboard. "You don't _need_ him," he says, softly.

Is that it? Is she confusing him with her refusal to act the way he's decided she should act? "Maybe that's the attraction." She takes a long, slow breath. She doesn't need Chase, and it's a relief sometimes. She shouldn't be this emotionally exhausted at 30. She just shouldn't.

She can still smell the church incense in her clothes, and she still feels like she has cotton in her head, like she's weightless. She's soaked through and the storm has brought a cold front in. She shivers a bit and folds her arms over her chest. "I'm not going back," she says.

"What?" His head jerks up, eyes finding hers.

"To the church. To any church. I just needed to… take another look. Make sure."

He studies her, and she swallows under his gaze, feeling bare. After awhile, there doesn't seem to be anything else to talk about.

"This rain isn't letting up," she says, twisting the key all the way and starting the car. "I'll drive you home. Wilson can bring you back for your bike tomorrow."

He says nothing, but out of the corner of her eye she can see him watching her. It makes her nervous. She often feels like she's just words on a page to him, and while it's often _not_ true because he gets it wrong as often as he gets it right, it's still unsettling.

They're on the turnpike when he says, "Go to your place. We'll check the weather."

She frowns a bit and glances at the car radio where the weather report is just one click away. He follows her glance but then looks away and remains silent.

And she marvels at the thread that seems to hold her to him, as she leaves the radio and takes the exit to her neighborhood. Is it a thread that will ever break? Or will she be tied to him forever in some bizarre way? Maybe the better question is does anyone escape unscathed from their time with House?

It's something she cannot answer, not now or even next week. Maybe never.

She leads him into her apartment without turning the lights on. The gray wash of daylight fills her living room. The rain taps against the windows. She wants to change into something warm and dry, but she stops to flip the TV on with the remote, punching in the number for the weather channel. When she glances back, House isn't looking at the TV. He's walking slowly around the room, eyes scanning the counter tops, the bookshelves, the desk where her computer is. He pauses there, fingers gliding lightly over the piles of her mail and her work, fanning the envelopes, head tilting as he reads the labels.

"What are you looking for?" she asks.

"Signs of cheating," he replies, and she rolls her eyes.

"I'm not 'cheating' with Chase. You and I aren't together." He _knows_ all of this, of course, and she always feels like she's explaining the obvious. She tosses the remote on the sofa and walks toward the window to see if there's any sign of clearing.

There isn't. The sky is slate gray, and the water runs in torrents down the gutters. It feels like it's been raining for months, although conceivably she knows there were days of sun. This isn't her.

"That isn't what I meant." His voice is low and directly behind her. She jolts a bit.

She glances sideways so she can glimpse him in her peripheral vision and says nothing. She can feel him behind her, and just like in the car he seems to take up more space than she has. He's a physical presence in her apartment that makes her hyperaware. She hears his leather jacket creak as he shifts.

"You're going to leave me," he says, simply, voice low.

She opens her mouth to deny it then closes it again. She realizes the thought has been there a while, and it's only now that she's looked directly at it. "I don't know," she finally admits.

He exhales slowly and his breath brushes her ear. "What do you want me to do?"

She furrows her brows in aggravation. It's not a negotiation. "Nothing," she says. "Not everything in my life is about you."

Except this is.

And it isn't.

She can hear the slow cadence of his breathing and the strident rapping of the rain, and her air conditioner kicks on, the vent at her feet blowing cool air against her already chilled skin. She folds her arms against her wet clothes.

And then he presses his mouth against the side of her neck, just beneath her ear.

It's startling and paralyzing and incredibly warm. He pauses, but when she doesn't move away, his chest presses into her back, his hand floating upward, fingers grazing her jaw then circling her throat, pressing firmly to keep her in place as he tastes her again. His breath puffs out against her skin, and his beard is surprisingly soft.

It's that thread, she thinks, that thread that keeps her wired in place. That thread that pulls delicately at her insides and makes her feel like she's coming apart. In a way that feels so good she can barely stand it.

He turns her and then his mouth is on hers. She forgets about everything except the taste of him, and how, oh my god, this is actually _him_. And it echoes dimly in her mind that this, _this_, is exactly the reason she needs to go.

He peels his jacket off and then hers, and then his cane goes, and he limps along with her, weight on her shoulder, as he kisses her and follows to her bedroom.

It isn't hurried, but it's purposeful. The room is dim in the darkness of the weather, and she forgot to make the bed that morning. She feels strangely shy lying naked in front of him, and then eager and light as his mouth moves from her throat to her breasts and then lower along her belly. The anticipation makes her skin feel burned and sensitive, and when his eyes meet hers she sees something very unguarded. He's hard and silent and very deliberate.

The world becomes a distant blur when she slides on top of him and he slides inside of her. His fingers curl into her thighs, holding her against him as he pushes up. His eyes close and his lips part, and she can hear his hard exhalations. It's heady.

She moves with him and all of it—the pleasure and the ache and the history—is so sharp it's almost painful. He drags her down to kiss her, overwhelming her with the depth of the motion, his mouth hard and hungry. He murmurs something against her lips that she can't quite understand. It sounds like, "You'll stay…"

She comes trying to swallow his name, and it dies in her throat. She closes her eyes, trying to make it last, body tight around his. He comes a minute later, swearing in whispers, hands gripping her hips so hard that she thinks there'll be marks by morning.

They don't talk in the aftermath, and she slips down to lay beside him. He keeps his eyes closed but his arm around her, and his fingers sooth the skin on her hip where he held her. Eventually he sleeps, and the rain lulls her into a drowsy half-doze.

He's still out a half hour later, and she can hear the TV in the other room. The standard recorded news voice saying to expect rain, heavy at times, and cooler than average temperatures. The room feels heavy and weighted, just like the church did.

She slides out of bed and slips into an old, threadbare, button-up shirt. She hovers at the window, watching the rain pour down. It's a little darker now, night coming. She glances at House and his eyes are open, watching her. She stays silent and just watches him back. His brows are furrowed in that intense, grumpy way of his, and she feels studied. She wouldn't have thought herself so arcane, but he's having problems working her out, she can see.

Just when she's about to say something inane just to break the silence, he closes his eyes again. So she lets it be. This won't change anything, she knows. And it's because of that she turns her thoughts back to leaving. She feels both excitement and dread at the idea. She's not even sure it'll work, that he'll let her be completely free.

But she has to regain some ground. She has to get some semblance of power back from him, or he'll drown her. This isn't the last thing he can do to keep her, but it's the last thing he's capable of. For now. And it's not that it isn't enough, because it was never about how much he could give her.

He doesn't understand that yet, but he will.

And it still won't save him.

~end~


End file.
